High School kid's science fair project may have cured Cystic Fibrosis
Written by AndyFriday, May 13 2011 07:00
Remember when you made a baking soda-and-vinegar volcano for your science fair? Or grew mold on a piece of toast? Kinda looks like amateur hour compared to this kid.
16-year-old Marshall Zhang is an 11th grader at Bayview Secondary School in Richmond Hill, Canada, just outside of Toronto. And for his science project, he cured Cystic Fibrosis. Check this out,
Marshall was researching cystic fibrosis, and came up with a theory that if you used a certain mix of drugs, it could completely stamp out the effects of the disease.
Cystic fibrosis causes the protective mucus on a person's lungs to become extra thick and sticky, which makes them prone to life-threatening infections. It's a horrible disease that generally leads to disability and early death.
Marshall contacted Dr. Christine Bear of Canada's Hospital for Sick Children. She hooked him up with a supercomputer where he could model the effects of his drug cocktail on cells infected with cystic fibrosis.
And he found: "The cells treated with the two drugs were functioning as if they were the cells of healthy individuals."
Marshall submitted his project to a contest called the Sanofi-Aventis BioTalent Challenge, and won the first prize of, $5,000.
The next step here is to take Marshall's treatment and do full clinical testing. It could still be a few years before it's available, but it's a legitimately groundbreaking step, all by a high school junior. (The Register)
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- tmarland04
on May. 14, 2011 at 1:48 AM